An overview of the holographic display related tasks within the European 3DTV project

A European consortium has been working since September 2004 on all video-based technical aspects of three-dimensional television. The group has structured its technical activities under five technical committees focusing on capturing 3D live scenes, converting the captured scenes to an abstract 3D representations, transmitting the 3D visual information, displaying the 3D video, and processing of signals for the conversion of the abstract 3D video to signals needed to drive the display. The display of 3D video signals by holographic means is highly desirable. Synthesis of high-resolution computer generated holograms with high spatial frequency content, using fast algorithms, is crucial. Fresnel approximation with its fast implementations, fast superposition of zonelens terms, look-up tables using pre-computed holoprimitives are reported in the literature. Phase-retrieval methods are also under investigation. Successful solutions to this problem will benefit from proper utilization and adaptation of signal processing tools like waveletes, fresnelets, chirplets. and atomic decompositions and various optimization algorithms like matching pursuit or simulated annealing.